Elizabeth Costello Literary Elements

A novel

The novel is about a life of a renowned Australian writer, Elizabeth Costello – who travels around the world with lectures on animals’ rights, realism and literary censorship. Her first novel is an interpretation of James Joyce’s Ulysses in which she liberates Molly Bloom and makes her a central character. Although this work makes her famous, she gets weary of it with age. She doesn’t want to speak about it, for she has changed and so have her interests. Elizabeth chooses the least popular topics for public speaking such as realism, vegetarianism and animal’s rights, evil, language, love and sexuality. This is a story not only about the writer but an elderly person, who is lonely and tired. Although she has a sister, two children and grandchildren, Elizabeth Costello is deprived of such things as genuine family warmth and understanding. Time is 1990s.

The narrator is a commentator, for he often adds his own observations. The novel is written from the third point of view.

Tone is depressing and mood is tragic.

Elizabeth Costello is the protagonist of the story, while Emmanuel Egudu could be considered the antagonist of the story, for he is a writer, who says what audience wants to hear. Mr. West and the audience also perform roles of protagonists.

The first conflict is man vs. society, for Elizabeth tries to explain her thoughts to people, who don’t want to listen or don’t want to try to understand her. The second conflict is man vs. man. This is revealed when Elizabeth starts asking herself what she believes in and whether she believes in anything.

The climax of novel happens when someone from the audience Elizabeth speaks for says that she is a weak vessel.

The moment, when Susan Moebius says that the modern audience doesn’t want to listen to depressing stories about Kafka, it becomes clear that Elizabeth doesn’t fit in the modern society.

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The novel is full of allusions. Coetzee mentions such writers as Daniel Defoe, Doris Lessing, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Henry James, and Marcel Proust. The author also mentions such characters as Molly Bloom, Daisy Duck, and Red Peter.

Imagery helps readers to understand how Elizabeth feels .

John says that Elizabeth was “so bad at telling bedtime stories” and this is a paradox, for she is a writer, whose job is to create fictions. One would think that all writers are perfect story-tellers, but Elizabeth proves them wrong.

We, we, we, she thinks. We Africans. It is not our way.
Parallelism helps to underline how irritated Elizabeth is.

The cruise line I work for will jump at the opportunity.
The cruise line is a metonymy, for it denotes not the whole line, but its management.
The truth is, to the West we Africans are all exotic, when we are not simply savage.
The West is a synecdoche, for this cardinal direction stands for all countries which are located in the western hemisphere.

The phrase "Fat novels"